The Borg design pattern
How to have shared state between different instance of a class without a singleton pattern.
The ‘Singleton’ DP is all about ensuring that just one instance of a certain class is ever created. It has a catchy name and is thus enormously popular, but it’s NOT a good idea – it displays different sorts of problems in different object-models. What we should really WANT, typically, is to let as many instances be created as necessary, BUT all with shared state. Who cares about identity – it’s state (and behavior) we care about!
By Alex Martelli at Singleton? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Singleton: The Borg Design Pattern.